


Tightrope

by throttlegainwell



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: BDSM Scene, Bondage, Bucky is a stone top, Dirty Talk, HYDRA Trash Party, Humiliation kink, Kink Negotiation, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mild Painplay, Past Sexual Abuse, Sex Toys, not as dark as the tags sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:16:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throttlegainwell/pseuds/throttlegainwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex these days comes with a lot of rules. Some of them are longstanding and obvious, some basic courtesies, some personal quirks that still apply after seventy years. The biggest change, honestly, really boils down to one rule, and it’s not as big a paradigm shift as it could be: Steve doesn’t touch Bucky unless Bucky says so, and Bucky rarely says so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tightrope

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt: _After coming in from the cold and beginning to recover, Bucky picks up where he left off with Steve. In bed. But he has seventy years of nasty memories, and navigating that minefield is hard. He'll kiss Steve for hours. He'll rim and finger him (no one ever made him do that) or fuck him with toys. He's jerked him off one or twice, when he felt like he could handle it, but it doesn't always go so well. But the only one who ever touches Bucky below the waist is Bucky._
> 
> Everything here is 100% consensual and negotiated, but _please_ read the end notes or just skip this one entirely if you are easily triggered, because Bucky's abuse at HYDRA's hands is definitely a looming specter here and it's pretty obvious how it's affecting Bucky.

Sex these days comes with a lot of rules. Some of them are longstanding and obvious, some basic courtesies, some personal quirks that still apply after seventy years. The biggest change, honestly, really boils down to one rule, and it’s not as big a paradigm shift as it could be: Steve doesn’t touch Bucky unless Bucky says so, and Bucky rarely says so. 

He’s always preferred to be in control, anyway, and he’s had Steve well trained in this since 1937. The first time Steve pulled Bucky’s hand to the back of his neck and curled his fingers down so hard that Bucky’s nails bit into Steve’s skin, pushed his head back in a show of backing off until Bucky took the hint and shoved his face down harder on his cock … well, that was an eye-opener. And they’ve worked well together since. But whereas that type of thing used to be a big part of their lives, it was by no means the only way they experienced each other, and maybe that’s the real change. 

Now it’s the only way Bucky can manage to stay in the room without crawling out of his skin.

Still, he doesn’t let that stop him from enjoying himself. There are layers to this, always have been, and even back in the day he didn’t always get off, didn’t even always get very hard. It was something Steve needed more than Bucky, even though Bucky was happy to give it to him.

It’s not lost on him that Steve’s the one indulging him now. But Steve isn’t just a man of action, of doing and moving and influencing; he’s also an impish little shit who hates being told what he can and can’t do, and being acted upon in this way is a challenge he’ll rise to when Bucky needs it.

He skims his fingertips down the smooth line of Steve’s back, held rigid and upright by the heavy reminder tethered near his neck and seated in his ass. Bucky was skeptical of the hook initially, but he has to admit that Steve looks damn nice this way, ankles cuffed to one spreader bar, wrists cuffed to another behind his neck, and a simple rope running between the o-ring of the hook and the wrist bar. The metal gleams between his cheeks in stark contrast to the dark matte finish of the bars and the rope he picked up in a sex toy store (which he likes because it’s an absurd purple color that he probably wouldn’t have actually used in the commission of a crime unless he’d absolutely had to; none of this looks like the submission he remembers, none of it sterile and intimidating and familiar, but rather aesthetically pleasing and almost delicate-looking on such a strong man. It’s as far from the mag-cuffs as he can get short of the fuzzy pink handcuffs that Steve had given one look and promptly stuck in an out of the way drawer never to be seen again). Every time he so much as flexes his fingers in the cuffs, it tugs on the rope, which tugs on the hook, which forces him to shift his posture again.

All of this has the effect of keeping him incredibly still so that Bucky can do as he pleases to him. And he does.

Bucky drags his thumbnail down the side of Steve’s neck, narrowing his eyes in curiosity. “What does it feel like?” 

“Pressure,” Steve says carefully, keeping his chest from raising more than it has to. “Like … a couple of fingers spread wide.”

“Good.” He likes making Steve tell him how he feels, make him articulate the ways and whims and needs of his body. It forces Steve to focus inward and project it back out; makes him forget that he can hear the couple down the hall laughing and the cars down on the street, people down in the alley and, most of all, the pesky cellphone that Bucky leaves in the bathroom every time they do this. It shorts out the mental calculations he’s always making. Steve needs to be fully immersed in a way that Bucky doesn’t allow himself; for Bucky, distance makes the heart grow fonder than any hand down his pants would.

They’re not exactly getting the same thing out of this, but the beauty of it is that they don’t need to. Steve doesn’t really need the toys, just wants to feel well-used, wants to be put in his place, sometimes wants to feel out of his skin and protected and loved regardless depending on the day, but Bucky needs compliance, and sometimes, no matter his trust in Steve, no matter his love for him, his word isn’t enough. In the heat of the moment, some nights, he needs the visual reminder: Steve’s hands stay where Bucky puts them, and in exchange Steve gets to beg and plead and run his mouth uninhibited. When Bucky’s not filling the silence for him, that is.

“You know, I could be touching myself right now,” Bucky says, standing behind Steve just close enough for Steve to feel his looming presence but not close enough to tell what he’s doing. Or not doing. Steve stays facing forward, eyes on the chest of drawers that holds their ever-expanding collection of gadgets and tools. “One hand pinching a nipple – know how you feel about those, sweetheart, and they’re tight for you – one hand cupping my balls.”

“Which hand?”

“Dealer’s choice.” Bucky grins and shakes his head, then blows down the sweat on the back of Steve’s neck to get him to jerk the rope a little and listen to him grunt. “I shaved ‘em yesterday just for the hell of it. Sam was right; everything does look bigger. You wanna see ‘em, lift one with your tongue and feel how nice and smooth they are?”

“Always,” Steve says, “want you any way. Want to touch every part of you, don’t care what. You could sleep in a muddy ditch an’ I’d suck you clean. Miss your smell.”

“You know you can’t have me, though, right? ‘Cause you try so hard to be good, don’t you, Steve, and you’re just never there.” Bucky exaggerates a sigh. His voice is soft; a pillow with the hard outline of a pistol tucked beneath. “You’ve gotta earn it back. I know you can do it, baby. Maybe by the time you get it right I’ll still be young enough to have a hard-on. I have hope. But there’s always room for improvement, right?”

Steve snorts. 

Bucky tugs on the hair at his nape, drawing his head back slightly in one hard pull. “Next sound I hear outta you better be shaped like ‘please’, tough guy.”

Looking down at him, Steve’s eyes are closed, the corners of his mouth turned up in a grin but relaxing quickly into something anticipatory. “Then you better make me scream. I haven’t behaved all night, Buck. You gonna show me what to do? Get down here with me and _make_ me beg? ‘Cause I want it, and I’ll do anything, Buck. I wanna suck the life out of you, stuff you down my throat ‘til I can’t breathe and forget I’m even supposed to, bite you in that spot you love, fucking taste you—”

Bucky’s other hand twists around to Steve’s neck so it’s circled all the way around in Bucky’s grip, and it’s loose, but a meaningful squeeze is all he needs. “I don’t even need my cock to take your breath away, baby. You’re easy.” He tucks back a loose hair that’s fallen over Steve’s forehead, stroking his face briefly with his thumb. Then he squeezes again. “But that’s another night. I think I’ll have your attention either way.”

One last squeeze before he shoves Steve’s head forward and lets go, as if pushing him away. Steve sucks in a tight breath; Bucky can see the hook stretching him open, forming a new, inviting shape from Bucky’s view, and a hard uncompromising pressure for Steve. He thinks about dropping down and blowing a little at Steve’s insides, but he hasn’t worked up to that yet tonight, and the hook has settled back into place besides. Steve is extra still now, catching his breath, but his chest is almost vibrating with the effort, little tremors and the occasional involuntary shudder that sets off a weak moan.

“I know you want me,” he says, back to playing the enticer, back to coaxing Steve in his direction for once, his full attention on Bucky’s siren call and not on a dozen other things that pull him away from Bucky all the time and keep Bucky running after him. This is Bucky’s night. And even if he can’t give Steve everything he wants, the guy has a damn fine imagination. Bucky doesn’t see the harm in the truth of it: Steve wants him bad. 

Steve also likes games, and challenges, and proving himself. In 1937 Bucky bet Steve that he couldn’t stay on the edge of coming for a whole hour. Steve grit his teeth and clawed at the towel under him and bit his fingernails into his own face, heaved his damp chest and snarled at Bucky to not so much as smirk at him, but by God the skinny bastard had done it. And then come like a freight train almost as soon as the clock struck three in the morning and his hour was up.

“But that’s life, Steve,” he continues, yanking his zipper down just for the noise, just so Steve can flinch at the piercing sound in the quiet room and shift a little on his knees. He slides it back up almost immediately after, but slowly, softly, smothering the sound with his words. Steve probably hears it anyway, but the message is clear. “We can’t all get what we want.” 

Steve’s not a settler – would reach for the stars if it interested him – and that one always gets his hackles up in such a pretty way. But he’s playing at being good, at behaving, at agreeing, so he doesn’t answer. 

Bucky kisses the top of his head. Then he strips off his shirt and throws it aside. Steve is good and doesn’t look in the direction it falls.

“Got to work back to where I was before your disruption. I was almost half-hard, too,” he lies. He lays his palm against the front of his jeans (armor by any other name), not for the touch, but maybe to remember what it was like. He runs his finger down the seam of the fabric, flicking hard. 

An unpleasant jolt rolls down his spine. He yanks his hand away and rests it over his abdomen instead. Safe territory. 

“Maybe I’m palming my tits. You can suck those if you’re very, very good. Know you need your lips on something to feel satisfied. Want you to imagine that, about your mouth on my chest. You think about that, and I’ll just stay back here and play with ‘em myself.” He leans in closer, still not moving his hand from its standby position, and fake-moans a little in Steve’s ear.

Steve’s moan is real. He never fakes. He’s never theatrical in bed the way he puts up a front the rest of the time; here he’s stripped down, nothing but studs on which Bucky can hang just about anything.

He kisses Steve’s shoulder, tongues a wet line in toward his neck, but he can’t compete with the bar, so when he can’t go any further he drags his teeth back the other way. He leisurely takes a moment to admire the red lines that spring up across Steve’s skin, smiles, and does it again. Then he wets his fingertips and drags them down Steve’s side, unprotected and bared with his arms held up rigidly by his head. He draws them back up the same path nails-first this time. He’s downright ticklish, sometimes, when you wind him up right. Even his prodigious concentration can’t stop the full body shiver all of these light touches elicit; not from a body trained to expect hard blows. And the rope jerks again even harder.

He whimpers and presses his knees together as best he can with his ankles held far apart, and it’s demure, somehow more vulnerable-looking than if he were spread out completely, this attempt to hide from the sensation and intensify it and hold it for an extra second all at once.

Bucky looks down at his hole, always reflexively checking, even though he knows that Steve’s fine. It’s wet, slick dripping down past the curve of his balls and all the way to the floor in shiny spatters, and Steve complains about this every time, that it dulls the friction and dulls the sensation, but he bets he’s glad for all the extra lube now. He’s sure it’s plenty intense without chafing on top of it. It’s a little red, but nowhere near as swollen as it’s going to be by the time they’re done; not because he necessarily likes leaving visible damage on Steve – although sometimes he does, knowing he can take it and that he _likes_ being marked, a simple request that Bucky can satisfy no problem – but just as a fact. Bucky’s had a rough day and he knows that getting off isn’t in the cards for him tonight, not even if he does it himself, doesn’t particularly want even the memory of a hand on him right now, and knows that Steve needs a little extra encouragement. He knows intimately the state of Steve’s body after nights like this.

When he closes his eyes he pictures it: purple smudges down his neck, red crescents on the indents of his hips, hair flat with sweat that’s cooled and almost grimy-feeling on his skin, lips swollen like the rim of his ass, wrists and ankles red. He doesn’t mean to picture Steve’s belly streaked with come, but it’s a picture he’s familiar with for more reasons than he likes to admit, and it hits him before he can shut it out, stutters his thoughts for a second before he can shakes his head like a dog to clear it. He rolls his shoulders, shakes out his hands, and blows out a hard breath. None of that tonight. None of that intrusive shit that slithers into his brain while he’s trying to have a nice time.

He swallows a few times, sucking on his tongue to get some fresh saliva into his mouth, trying to flush out the phantom taste. His skin itches.

He ignores that.

He digs his thumbs into the meat of Steve’s shoulders, massaging the tight muscles. 

“If you were good, if you could do like you were told, you know what I’d do?” He nods at the windowsill, leaning over Steve so he can see him from above. “I’d bend you right over. Shove you down hard as you can take it and hope you caught yourself, but that’s not important. The important thing is you ass-up.”

“What if I don’t catch myself?”

It’s not lost on Bucky that while he’s full of what-ifs and what-could-bes, Steve converts everything into present tense, into a fully-formed experience in which he can envelop himself, not a possibility but a certainty. And it’s Bucky’s voice that brings him there, which is a heady power trip by anyone’s measure.

“Then you’ll slam your face into the sill, won’t you?” he says, unconcerned. “Catch you right in the teeth, probably. That’s always the first shot anyone takes at you. Like a magnet.” He leans back. “That’s what happens when you’re not fast enough. When you fuck up. You know that feeling, right? I know you do.” 

“Like you wouldn’t kiss me with a bloody lip.”

“You’re right. You are pretty like that. But that’s not how I take care of what’s mine, so I expect you to take care of it, too.” He drops down into a crouch to put his lips to Steve’s ear. “You wouldn’t do what you’re not supposed to, would you? Unless you _couldn’t_ listen. Could you even do it?”

“I can do it.”

“Then you’ll catch yourself. You’ll always catch yourself, ‘cause I don’t want you to fall, and you do what I say. Not everything’s about blood, Steve. We don’t always need to see it just to prove it’s gushing through you hot and red. Hell, if you want it so bad…” He reaches around Steve and rakes his nails across his belly, harder than usual, almost enough to break the skin but not quite. Welts rise in hot lines. “There it is, Steve.”

“Can’t you do better than that?” Steve teases breathlessly. “Hardly felt it.”

Bucky snorts, unamused. He pulls the band from his hair and slips it around his wrist, shaking his head to send the slightly tangled mass flying before it settles in a dark curtain around his face. He pinches along the sensitive skin between Steve’s navel and groin, bursting blood vessels, bringing up little irregular spots that turn quickly from bloodless white to a dull rosy flush.

Steve sighs into the treatment. Bucky’s joked about it before, but he knows Steve’s not really into the pain for its own sake. He just likes the quiet pride that fills him when he takes it so well, and that could say a lot of things, but Bucky’s chosen to no longer concern himself with it. After all this time, he thinks he understands Steve a little better.

A surge of affection winds up through his chest like a Tesla coil, settling all the way down into his fingertips. He kisses Steve’s temple. Then he slips the hairband around Steve’s cock and snaps it against him.

Steve’s mouth opens on what’s probably going to be a scream before he slams his lips together instead. His jaw’s set like he’s biting his tongue and his chest heaves.

“There’s your blood, Steve,” Bucky says cheerfully. “Think you can take another?” _I think you can take another_ almost slips out of his mouth, but he’s genuinely asking. 

Steve stutters a breath in through his nose. He doesn’t answer right away, flexing his fingers and furrowing his brow instead. “I want to.”

“Can you?”

Steve’s face scrunches up in annoyance. “I said—“

“I know what you said. Not what I asked. Can you?”

“I can take whatever you want to give me.” 

Steve’s voice is low and gravelly, and it’s this more than the entire scene put together that makes Bucky throb in his jeans. He stands to roll his hips a little, trying to get more comfortable in the unforgiving fabric, but he finally has to just adjust himself properly as unceremoniously as he can. He snorts a bitter little laugh when he looks down at the line of his cock down the leg of his pants. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

He walks around to Steve’s front and crouches down in front of him. This isn’t his favorite position, too reminiscent of being below someone, but he’s not kneeling, only squatting, so that’s a plus; and he approaches the task with scientific curiosity, blank and almost uninvested. 

He reflexively glances at Steve’s hands (at his north star, always there when he needs it to lead him back to where he should be, a monument to his control over the situation), raised and bound in surrender like a breathing statue made of grit and dumbfuck determination. He holds that image in his mind as he leans in closer.

He shakes his head again, trying to clear it at the same time as verifying that his hair sways freely, doing what he wants it to do, not a single strand caught in the grip of a phantom hand from above. No hands. No shoving. When he moves closer, it’s exactly at the moment when he decides to and not one fucking moment sooner than he’s ready.

He takes Steve’s flushed cock in hand, notes almost disinterestedly the slimy, oozing head, pulled completely out of its protective foreskin. He tries not to think about how he’d once upon a time loved nothing more than being right here, wielding this power, and wanted to stay right here looking up at Steve with his cock resting comfortably vulnerable on his tongue. All he sees now is a thing, not the person it’s attached to. It’s just like any other cock, really, no matter how much he’d like that not to be the case. And that kind of ruins this some nights. This being one of them.

So he takes his enjoyment in the arch of Steve’s back, the panting breaths, the squirm of his hips. When his nails bite into his palms, when his eyes shut tight, when his nipples peak. These are signs of a job well done. These are proof enough of enjoyment, engagement, arousal. It’s okay if Bucky approaches his cock with somewhat detached caution, not an object of sexual desire but the potential for much more, and an unpleasant much more at that. His erection wilts a little looking at it and he can’t help but be clinical as he examines the spot where he’d struck him, and sure enough, there’s an angry line on his cock that stands out despite the even flush across it. He rubs it with his thumb, ignoring the rest but for this one spot of mercy that comes at a price. He digs his thumbnail into the spot, not hard, but then, how hard do you have to be when you cut in a defenseless place?

Steve keens, alternating between throwing his head back and curling in on himself protectively. Bucky only glances up, barely, affecting annoyance. He’s concentrating. 

The band still dangles around Steve’s cock. The elastic’s a little stretched out with overuse; Bucky’s been meaning to replace it. It still has just enough elasticity left in it for tonight. He moves it precisely half an inch closer to the crown and snaps it again, almost experimentally. Steve whimpers. Then he moves it precisely one inch down, past where he started, where the line is already fading back down, closer to the root, sensitive in different ways. When he snaps it again Steve’s toes kick at the floor even as he body stays still this time. He moves it incrementally, exactly, back and forth. Steve always knows where it’s going next because Bucky’s set rules here and he wouldn’t break them, not in this area. Always half an inch farther every time, back and forth. No surprises.

All told it’s not that many, doesn’t take very much time even with Bucky waiting between snaps and occasionally soothing with his thumb, but Steve sinks into the rhythm of it. Bucky looks up at his face after the first few times and he admires this about Steve, his ability to get to this place of perfect contentment. It’s the only time he can reach contentment of any kind, and Bucky’s happy to give it to him. Someone ought to have that. The muscles in Steve’s abdomen jump involuntarily every time it hits, but by the last strike the rest of his body is more relaxed than seems reasonably possible.

Well, most of his body. Bucky’s fingers slide back to his ass, back to the hook, and he laughs when he encounters the token resistance of his hole. It’s trying to clench, tightening from the repeated shocking pain, at the same time as it’s been repeatedly tugged open. What a conundrum.

“What are you thinking, Steve?”

And incredibly, what Steve’s thinking is this: “You’re so gorgeous. I want to … run my hands through your hair. I like it loose. I want to smooth it back and then mess it up some more. Comb the knots out with my fingers. Rub your scalp. I loved doing that.”

Bucky blinks a few times, stunned. Leave it to Steve to break the mood of an intense scene like this to get romantic and sweet because he can’t imagine being rough with Bucky like he wants Bucky to be with him. Leave it to Steve to go from having his cock battered to revealing his deep-seated desire to caress Bucky as gently as possible. Fucking sap. Fucking ridiculous, goddamn, incredible, beautiful sap.

Fucking Steve.

But he said _loved_. He’s good at constructing elaborate fantasies and imagining them in place of Bucky’s current limitations – hell, sometimes the only thing in the room that’s real is Steve’s high octane willpower – but that one past tense slip-up stings a little. Steve clearly doesn’t realize what he’s said, too caught up, and Bucky’s too touched by the rest of it to even mention it. It’d be hard to explain the swirl of colors in his head that it brings up, anyway. Best to ignore the tiny nick to the illusion he’s built to tell himself this is normal. It’s not his fault. It’s no one’s fault.

Bucky gives the hook one good jarring flick as he’s slipping the band farther down Steve’s cock one last time, this time not snapping it but pulling it over his balls to rest snugly behind them. They have a couple of rings in the drawer, but Steve does love improvisation. He lets it go gently this time.

“Points for creativity,” Steve says, still maddeningly steady.

Bucky circles the head of his cock with his thumb before he rises from his crouch. He looks down at Steve with soft eyes, and softer hands cup his chin to tip his face up, stroking the delicate skin of his throat with the length of his fingers. Except his thumb, damp from Steve’s slit, which he rests against Steve’s lips until he parts them and welcomes it into his mouth, over his tongue. Tasting himself. Someone should, since Bucky’s not going to. But he used to like the taste. It used to be a point of pride for him, swallowing, and he did it only for Steve.

Well. For a time, anyway.

He sharply cuts off that train off thought with another dizzying jerk of his head, trying to focus on the shape of Steve’s mouth around his thumb instead. He’s always been pretty with his mouth wrapped around things, as pretty as he is when he’s using it for mischief and chaos; but without the accompanying adrenaline Bucky can bask in it. 

He’d slipped a little surprise into a drawer behind them, out of Steve’s line of sight, before they’d started. He wasn’t sure whether it would be the kind of night for it, whether it would be overkill, but now feels like the time, so he retrieves it, paying no mind to all of the intentional noise that he makes. The muscles in Steve’s back tighten and release when the drawer scrapes open, little shivers bursting at random. He’s watching Steve the whole time, walked backwards so he doesn’t have to take his eyes off of him for a moment, and he feels around in the drawer blindly, but deftly.

The drawer slams closed with a bang. He manipulates the harness in his hands, position it front-forward by feel (like how he pulls his tac gear into place without thinking, holsters his weapons through muscle memory, finds and unsheathes his knives with movements so quick it’d slow him down to think abou—stop, can’t go there, not the time), and steps into it. He cinches it a little too tight, eager for the distraction of the sting. It feels good, in a way, like the pressure is holding everything in that needs to be tamped down, keeping the poison under his skin, making him feel solid and present. A reminder. He slides one of the cinching straps through his fingers like water, just for the whisper of sound it’ll make, just to see Steve’s ass clench from here. And it does.

He fits the fake dick into the harness and gives it a tap, watching it bob pleasingly, all the visual input of the power it commands with none of the sensory feedback of skin on skin, not so much as a draft of air across his crotch. Like armor, really. A pretty cerebral experience, just this shade of removed. 

He’d felt stupid doing this at first, but he’s grown to like the effect it has on Steve. Not because Steve needs cock and any will do, but because there’s something about this, as if Bucky can’t even be bothered to get it up for him, as if maybe if Steve worked just a little harder, showed more appreciation, he’d get the real thing; something about being acted upon with something completely inert, that makes Steve flush with a dull shame in a way that tying him up and bullying him just doesn’t. It cuts right across the vital places Steve needs it to. And Bucky wants to look down and see Steve working something, doesn’t care what, knows it won’t be him. Wants the picture in his head, doesn’t need the warmth and spit.

He walks up behind him with heavy steps, mouth open on his next command, lips pulling back to form the letters, for an extra second before he says it. “Stand.”

It’s awkward, really, to move in Steve’s position, downright unfair to ask him to do it with a hook tugging in his ass. But he didn’t ask, he ordered, and Steve’s graceful and strong enough to pull it off. Nothing can stop it from looking just as undignified as it is, rocking himself a little from side to side, trying to get his feet under him to push up from his knees, all while hoping he doesn’t fall forward and faceplant. It’s possible he could throw himself to the side and _maybe_ succeed in catching himself. But best to get it right the first time. Steve would be mad if Bucky had to catch him. Bucky’s not one hundred percent certain that he should catch him; he’s already not touching him, not offering any assistance.

But Steve doesn’t put him in that position in the bedroom, doesn’t make him choose. He always gets the important things right.

Steve arches his back a few degrees to counterbalance, and at the last second he throws himself forward and pushes himself to his feet, the sequence so fast it almost happens all at once. It’s wobbly but impressive and Bucky resolves to convince Steve to work out naked more often. Fuck, he’s beautiful. 

It’s not exactly the image most people have of Captain America standing tall, proud, and inspiring against all odds. It’s better. But it’s just Bucky’s, no one else’s. He imagines a propaganda poster of this and promptly decides it’d be more at home on the nose of a bomber.

Steve’s panting after his abrupt stop, squirming like mad at the hook’s new position, at the intensity of the stretch with no accompanying sense of fullness. Must be like an itch. It’s probably cold, air drifting into a place it’s not meant to be, still wet. He turns his head to the side, almost looking over his shoulder, before he remembers where he’s supposed to be looking and makes a high, needy noise in his throat. Bucky catches the expression on his face, the sweat at his temples and the errant drops that have slipped down to sting at his eyelashes. The indents of his teeth in his dry lips.

Bucky steps closer again and slips a finger in beside the hook. The lube’s worn a little thin. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the bottle of slick to squirt some more in, not even bothering to warm it or work it around with his fingers. Just doses it out with the nozzle and leaves it. Steve whines when the hard plastic pokes into him, swears at the rush of cold, only slightly warmed by being in Bucky’s pocket.

“Think I’m getting my hands sticky just to get you comfortable?” Bucky snorts and taps Steve on the ass. “I’m a reasonable guy, though, aren’t I?”

He pushes the hook in deeper and Steve rocks up onto his toes. It tugs down on the rope slightly, pulling his arms back further and drawing his shoulders in, a thoroughly different kind of stretch. Bucky jostles it in and out a few times before he nudges it firmly upward and drops it sharply, letting it fall back into place by its full weight. “Nice and wet now, huh? Think I got it just about everywhere important. I miss any spots?”

Tremors are trickling down Steve’s back. Bucky reaches around to steady Steve’s hips and feels the muscles of his groin clenching hard and releasing spasmodically. He massages them loose again, separating Steve from the feeling, making him wait just far enough from the edge to dull it and drive him to fuming. But he’s not angry, not this worked up, closer to tears of frustration than anything else.

He digs his thumbs into Steve’s back and massages there for a minute as well, working his way down to cup Steve’s ass and push his cheeks closed around the hook, pulling them open wide again, letting them go. The fake dick has been bumping into Steve at random all along and everywhere it touches Steve twitches. He kisses the top of Steve’s spine below the bar.

Then he goes down to his knees.

Steve’s got to angle his back differently to keep his balance with his feet locked into place and that makes his back curve, makes the rope jut out farther from his skin. The unnatural stance is more obvious from down here. 

He bites across Steve’s lower back and casually jerks the rope out of the way with his thumb.

Bucky wraps one hand around his thigh to steady him. The other one plucks the rope like a harp, once, twice, just a feint, then presses into the crack of his ass to pull him wide and have another look. He stares for more than a full minute, just holding Steve open for his scrutiny, his inspection. Waits to see if Steve will shift at the silent, intense attention. Prods impersonally after the minute is up. Hums noncommittally. 

Steve is bowstring-tense in anticipation.

Bucky doesn’t disappoint. He doesn’t start out teasing, just curls his tongue into a hard point and shoves it in beside the hook. He’s good at this and it doesn’t take long before Steve’s begging.

“Just one finger, c’mon, it’s all I need. You know where I need it.”

“It doesn’t count if you don’t say please.”

“Fuck you. One finger, c’mon. Wait, two. Just two, that’ll work.” He pushes his ass back toward Bucky’s face.

Bucky promptly delivers a hard slap and gets back to work without a second thought. He doesn’t put his fingers where Steve wants them, but he does offer up just the two requested fingers to weigh Steve’s sac, press in behind it, and stroke back toward his crack, stopping short before his rim.

Steve huffs in frustration, but it’s for show. He loves Bucky’s tongue.

Bucky reaches under the rope to fit it over his forearm and grip his flank and knead at the muscles, freeing up the hand holding Steve open to move to his inner thighs and massage. It’s a mixture of contrasts: the intense stretch of his rim and the pull on his shoulders and the softness of Bucky’s tongue, the gentleness of his soothing hands. He moves the hand on his flank inward, lessening the pull on the rope but only to press hard on his coccyx, a sensation that must be at least ninety percent pain with little reward. Steve growls at the spike of it, but doesn’t try to escape it.

With Bucky’s mouth busy, Steve dutifully fills up the silence between noises that fall wantonly from his mouth. “Got your tongue up my ass and I keep thinking ‘bout your cock banging into my leg every time you move. I’ve been good, Buck, I didn’t ask for it. Not really. And it’s just rubbing me everywhere but where I need it.”

“Not everywhere.”

“Everywhere it’s got no business being. Legs aren’t very sensitive. Even _I_ can’t come from a good calf rubbing.”

He slurps noisily before he responds, trying to sound thoughtful and contemplative and like he may or may not get back to Steve’s ass any time soon. Serves him right, questioning like that. “Maybe it’s been minding its own business, you think of that? Maybe it’s not for you.”

“You got some other guy on the ropes in the next room you plan to dick hard?”

“Would you like that?” He sucks a kiss into the long breadth of his perineum, then sits back to rest on his heels. He wipes his face on his arm. “You want me to keep you tied up while I show you what you’ve been missing? Be good motivation, wouldn’t it? I could find any schmuck off the street who could do what you do.”

“Wouldn’t be the same,” he challenges.

“You’re right. They’d do it better. You’re so stubborn, doll. You can’t even stay in place without a little engineering. If you could behave without the toys then my mouth wouldn’t taste like stainless steel, now, would it? Just to suck your loose, greedy hole. Nice of me, isn’t it?”

“Maybe I like the way metal tastes. Lemme have a taste, Buck.”

Bucky rises quickly, making Steve sway a little from the loss of contact before he rights himself. Bucky walks around and doesn’t waste any time before kissing Steve good and hard, tongue pressed up against his palate, feeling out the backs of his front teeth.

He grips the back of Steve’s neck and pulls until he’s standing on his toes, just for the pleasure of seeing Steve respond to the unspoken command. 

Steve breaks first, gasping a breath and lowering his heels back to the floor. “That’s what you’re whining about? I tasted worse in K-rations.”

He shuts up when two metal fingers, just like he’d begged for, find their way into his mouth. A stronger taste, Bucky’s sure.

His other hand drops to the dildo to grip it against Steve’s dick and pull up in one long, smooth tug, a parody. “Maybe you can practice. Show me what you wanna do. Drop.”

He puts his hands to Steve’s palm to palm and interlaces their fingers so Steve can lower himself back down to the floor. 

Bucky shakes his head. “Clumsy,” he says. _Graceful as a goddamn angel_ , he thinks. Steve’s ego doesn’t set much stock in the outside world, though; any sudden leaps tend to come from within, at the end of the night when he drags his sore and aching body into bed and grins at Bucky with a wattage that could distract passing aircraft. What he really likes is hearing you tell him he’s done it wrong so he can prove to you why he had it right.

The intent is clear. He pauses anyway before doing anything else, looking Steve in the eye for added gravity. “Feeling patriotic?”

Steve shakes his head. “Green.”

And just like that, they keep going.

Steve doesn’t nuzzle forward into Bucky’s crotch like he clearly wants to, even though there’s no skin to touch. Bucky rewards him with the first inch or so of fake dick. It’s not very big, small enough for Bucky to feel comfortable being a little rough, just enough to stretch Steve’s lips into a sweet shape and jut over the back of his tongue slightly, with a bit of room left over to keep Steve’s face a reasonable distance from his groin.

The dick’s purple, too, garish and silly-looking and hard to take seriously until it’s shoving into your face over and over. Steve’s brow furrows; Bucky knows that he’s privately mortified, being made to pointlessly service something so ugly and with no hope of hurrying it to completion until Bucky wants it to end, because it’s not like he can make the thing come after all. 

Not that that always helps, hurrying them along.

He bites his lip so hard, so fast, that blood wells up around his teeth; the skin pulls and sticks when he closes his mouth. _Stop it, fucking stop it, not now, go away._

He pushes in hard, discouraging Steve’s game attempts to finesse the thing as though it were real, and clears his throat. “Where were we? Right, right. I was bending you over. You’d have your hands jammed up against the window frame, arch your back real pretty for me. You’d better not crack the wood. I know my baby can control himself, can’t he? So you clutch it nice and tight, so I know you’re feeling it all, but don’t you break anything. I see fingermarks in the plaster and I’ll know just how to make you stand all night without laying a finger on you. I’d leave your ass empty until you can handle it. But you’d stay right where I left you, waiting, while I took care of real shit. I don’t have time to watch you all night just ‘cause you can’t get my meaning. You know how behind I get on training when I’m satisfying your hormones? Taking hours just to make you come? It already eats into my schedule. But that doesn’t matter right now, baby, because I haven’t even gotten into you yet, have I? I’m still rubbing your training cock over your needy hole, and I know you’d be good this time.” He pulls out to rub it over Steve’s lips, get his face wet and shiny. 

“Sun’s up and the curtains are open. Everyone can see how bad you need it, Steve, what you’re willing to do for a fat cock. Press your face up against the glass to cool you off and hope no one has a camera pointed at you.” No one does. He’s strongly discouraged surveillance activity in their direction and it hadn’t taken long for that lesson to sink in. If anyone were to try, they’d catch his attention in a big way and wouldn’t enjoy the experience. “Maybe they would, though. Would you like that? Seeing your desperate face mashed into the window with a cock in your ass. What you look like. I can tell you. Flushed and sweaty, lips drawn back, eyes smashed shut. You look like a common whore, not even a good one. Totally at someone else’s mercy. I’d have my hand in your hair, make sure you keep your head up. Wouldn’t want you to suddenly discover your bashful side.”

One particularly hard, nasty shove has tears springing to the corners of Steve’s eyes. He chokes back the gag it triggers and Bucky rewards him by pulling out completely. 

He kneels down in front of Steve so they’re face to face. “Oh, say, can you see?”

Steve glares. It takes him a couple of swallows to get his voice back. “Green as your face that day you lost a bet to Jack Malone and ate a pail of week-old bait.”

Bucky means to say something appropriately chastising, menace his way right back into control, but when he opens his mouth to spit the deprecation that gets Steve hard, he laughs instead. He really laughs.

He laughs so hard he has to walk away for a few minutes and lean over, hands braced on his knees, and laugh it all out.

Steve looks disgustingly pleased with himself when Bucky comes back and slaps his ass in rebuke. 

“I went to a lot of trouble to set up a certain mood here, you little shit.”

“I can’t help it, Buck. I’m hysterical. That’s my secret weapon.”

Bucky snorts. “Jesus Christ.”

He blows out a hard breath to get back into character, rolling his shoulders. His voice drops to molten lead, heavy with menace and intent. Trying to pin Steve down into place with his words.

“What if I just tie you spread-eagle on the floor, hook this to a collar, and leave you there. Rope would have to be shorter. I gave you too much leeway this time. So I’d make it shorter and we’d start training fresh. Every time you put your head down to rest your neck you’d feel it.”

“That doesn’t sound hard.”

“You didn’t let me finish, baby. That vibrator we save for special occasions, the one that sounds like a construction site? I’d strap it in place and leave it on high butted right up against the metal, not touching skin at all. It’s a mighty powerful toy, Steve. Think even such indirect stimulation might bring you off?” The words feel clinical dropping off his tongue, half a mildly curious question and half a dare. “Or would it just keep you strung out on the tension, keep you crying ‘til it started to hurt, and never let you finish. I’d leave it on ‘til the batteries ran low.”

“I wouldn’t cry, Buck,” he breathes out. He drops back into the game so fast Bucky’s impressed.

“Oh, yes, you would. I’d make you. ‘Sides, when your whole body’s soaked in sweat and your cock’s dripping, what’s the difference? You sure you could even tell? I’d make you fuckin’ sob ‘til your guts hurt and then, when your pretty boy lashes are all stuck together, I’d cool your face down with my tongue. A reward, for taking it so good, like I keep telling ya you could do if you just listened.”

“Oh, God, Buck.”

“Wait, it gets better.” _I can outdo myself._ “I’d let you suck the salt offa my tongue. S’the only time you’ll get the chance, remember. We both know I’m not gonna suck your sorry cock until you can execute my orders perfectly. And even then, you’d have to catch me in the right mood. Statistically you use up all your luck jumping through windows, so I wouldn’t hold out too much hope there.

“So if you want to taste yourself on me, sweetheart, you’re gonna have to cry,” he whispers. “And beg for the privilege.”

By the time he’s finished with his little speech Steve is panting.

Bucky cocks his head to the side. “Your ass numb yet, America the beautiful?”

“Not as numb as you’d think.”

He nods in approval. It takes a minute or so to undo the cuffs around Steve’s wrists slowly and massage a little of the stiffness out. Steve looks up at him curiously. Bucky narrows his eyes at him until Steve looks straight ahead again. 

He shoves Steve over, watching as he topples forward and catches himself on his palms. He admires the view for a moment, Steve on his hands and knees, and then he picks up the bar, rope gone slack, and brings it over Steve’s shoulder, adjusting the knot with his other hand to eke out a bit more rope. He holds it in front of Steve’s face until he opens his mouth, eyes skeptic, to hold it between his teeth.

“Don’t drop that,” Bucky warns.

Steve can neither talk nor move his head much to nod, so he settles for an eye roll.

Bucky grabs his hair and yanks the bar out with his other hand. “What was that?”

Steve rolls his jaw side to side experimentally before he answers. “I meant, that much was obvious, _sir_.”

Bucky drops his hair and replaces the bar. “Smartass.” He shoves Steve’s head down. “But I’ll take care of you, sweetheart. Pull it. That’s it. A little more. Drop your head more. Hold yourself nice and open for me. That’s what you do best. I see that hole close once, we’re through. I’ll leave you like this.”

Steve’s whimper is small and muffled, but Bucky catches it and allows himself a brief shiver of his own before he goes down behind Steve and gets to work. After a while he pulls the dildo out of the holder and sets it aside, distracted by the wobbling.

He does tease this time, starting out with little touches. He wants to make sure Steve can really feel all of this; this much prodding, for this long, can take away some of the bite.

It’s better than the alternative. 

When he bites his lip this time the dried blood from before sticks to his teeth. The taste is sharp, but it doesn’t do much to ground him.

His eyes hurt when he blinks; he realizes he’s been holding them shut tight for who knows how long. Steve waits, unaware, not looking back. Probably figures the waiting is part of the game.

Bucky pauses to watch Steve’s hole for a minute, trying to get back into the spirit of things. It’s pulled wide, fluttering in a struggling effort to accommodate the stretch. He _can_ see inside Steve now, and he tells him so, sliding all four fingers all the way in and spreading them ungently, almost in a daze. His brain is slowing and he can’t quite tell why. “Lot of doctors catch a look at this? You’ve seen lots of doctors. How many of them told you this was another test? How many people in white coats know what’s inside o’ you?” His other hand reaches under Steve to crush his balls up against his body, making him jerk forward. Bucky keeps them in his grip, fingering at the band still wrapped around them. “They tell you it was for your own good? That they were making you better?”

Steve’s muscles tense a fraction and his head tips back enough for the rope to sag a little. His hole’s so stretched now that it doesn’t close right away, but that’s not the point. Bucky shoves his fingers in farther, pressing down hard on the spot he knows will make his point. “I said keep it open, Soldier.”

His voice sounds far away. The heat around his probing fingers is much closer.

“That’s a good boy,” he continues. His chest feels wrong, slime coating his mouth and making it hard to talk. “This ass doesn’t close until I say so. Unless I say so. I want this thing open, I’ll put you away like that. It better be open when I take you out. Maybe if I do it enough, it’ll never close.” He ripples his fingers, making the heavy weight in his hand bounce and jostle. His other hand keeps pressing strategically, mercilessly, on the prostate he’s located. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I know it hurts when we stretch you. No closing, no stretch, no sad little Soldier, you got it? See, I’m not a bad guy. I don’t want to make you hurt. You just need to know your place. What you’re good for. And that’s doing what I say, and maybe this time it’s dropping to your knees to suck me off in a warm pool of fresh blood.”

“ _Red_. Red, Bucky. It’s red. Stop.”

Bucky doesn’t immediately move away from Steve, but he does stop instantly. The haze doesn’t melt right away. When the pieces are all together again, in the right order, he blinks. And he blinks some more.

Steve’s on his side looking up at Bucky with evident concern. He’s already had time to lean down and undo the cuffs on the bar holding his legs open and set it aside. He’s toying with the rope while he waits; it’s completely slack, but it’s something for his hands to do. He knows the drill here. 

Bucky’s tongue flaps clumsily at the roof of the desert that’s become his mouth until he can form words that hopefully mean something. “I hurt you?”

“No, Buck,” Steve says seriously, shoulders sagging in relief. “Never.”

“Did I scare you?”

Steve doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t quite say no, gaze averted while he reaches back to ease the hook out of himself and lay it aside so he can shuffle over to Bucky, slowly, not quite close enough to touch unless Bucky reaches out for him. “I know it’s only right for you to check in on me ‘cause I’m the one getting knocked around here, but you gotta check in with yourself, too, Buck. I want you to feel safe with me. If you need some time, I’m fine going back to necking. I like that. You like that. I don’t feel like I’m missing out when it doesn’t get heavy. I have you.”

“You mean you safeworded out for _me_?” There is no bad reason to safeword. Bucky knows this. If you need it, you do it. Period. But his jaw clenches while he chews over the fact that Steve safeworded for _Bucky’s_ protection, not his own. “I can take care of myself, Steve.”

Steve’s patience is both a balm and an exercise in humility. “If it’s your job to look out for me here, then it’s my job to look out for you. This is a partnership. That’s how this works. So it’s just as up to me to let you know when I don’t think you’re all there, or when you’re not being fair to yourself.”

“Because you don’t want me hurting myself,” he concedes. Except. “Or because I scared you?”

Steve doesn’t answer for a good long time, long enough that Bucky leans over to wrap his arm around Steve’s shoulders and let him tuck his face into Bucky’s neck, relaxing into the touch. “A little. You only scared me a little. Mostly _for_ you.”

But it’s clear that, however small, however briefly, there was a part of Steve that was just plain afraid. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says. “I didn’t—“

“Don’t be. The system’s there for a reason. So I used it. You did what you were supposed to do: you stopped. We’ll move on.”

They sit for a couple of minutes before Steve starts to shift uncomfortably, looks up at Bucky sheepishly from under his latches, and reaches down. Bucky hasn’t wanted to look into Steve’s lap. He’s not up to it right now, and his neck flushes at that, but it’s true. He doesn’t really want to see any dicks right now, no matter how pathetic it makes him feel. His brow scrunches in confusion before Steve’s hand comes back up holding the impromptu cockring in the form of Bucky’s now stretched beyond salvaging hairband. 

Steve shrugs. He knows better than to put his hands anywhere near Bucky’s head, even though he clearly wants to touch Bucky’s hair, so instead his slowly raises his hand and carefully drops the band onto the floor in front of Bucky. 

“I know it’s not my place to ask,” Steve says slowly, “but I think this overlaps with our after-action play-by-play, so we probably should.” He takes a deep breath. His shoulders rise and fall comfortingly under Bucky’s arm. “What do you think was the trigger, so that we don’t do it again?”

And, yeah, mostly he tries not to pry into Bucky’s head too much about this stuff, trusts Bucky to tell him what he needs to know, but he’s right: this is probably a much-needed thing to know.

Bucky takes even longer to answer, but when he does, he’s careful to keep his voice from sounding dead like the hollow feeling in his chest. Steve doesn’t deserve that. “I’ve just … been on edge all day. I shouldn’t have tried for such an intense scene.” Quieter, he admits, “I’m not … sure I can handle all of the clinical stuff. It got … pretty medical in my head, pretty fast, and those … aren’t good memories me. I mean, shit, no one likes doctors, but … yeah. You know what I mean.”

“I know.”

It’s always interesting to Bucky how Steve can do this: he’s acting like this is a perfectly reasonable conversation about a perfectly reasonable thing, like they’re really just discussing how the scene went and how it can be better next time, not how Bucky’s body had only recently come back under his own control and staring deep into a gaping, raw ass had been the nail in the coffin of his hold over the memories. Being manipulated. Held still. Compliant. Poked by strangers and tested, filled with strange things for flimsy reasons.

And Steve’s just … not making a big deal out of it. Making a mental note in his Adventures in Kinkland log and moving on. “I figured,” he says. “Now that I think back on it, you were getting a little rougher there, none of those little touches. Stopped saying my name a while back. That’s what did it.”

_Stopped checking in, stopped paying attention …_

That drops like a weight in Bucky’s stomach, a congealed mass of shame and embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Steve,” he implores again.

Steve shakes his head. “Don’t be. I told you. We need to communicate better. I should have realized you weren’t in a good space to do this tonight. It’s on both of us.”

Bucky disagrees on several levels, but that might be his wounded pride talking, so he nods. “Maybe we can go back to making out for a while after all. At least until after we find that research lab and shut it down.”

“We’ll raze it to the ground if that’s what you want,” Steve says, tipping his head up to look Bucky in the eye. His voice modulates oddly with his neck at this angle, breathy and strained, but it stays soft nonetheless. Maybe it’s not just the angle. “For what he did to you, and so they can’t ever do it to anyone else.”

Bucky thinks about the intel he’d read and reread a dozen times that morning, the words that have been rattling around inside him ever since like a broken piece of machinery come loose, the visual confirmation of an unsuspecting face he never wants to see again unless it’s through the scope of his rifle.

He kisses the top of Steve’s head, then reaches into the dresser again for a blanket that he wraps around the two of them, leaning into one another, Bucky still in his jeans and Steve still naked with a mostly soft cock and his ass still wet with enough lube to leave a damp, sticky spot on the fabric. Bucky’s fingers loosely trap Steve’s wrist and stroke against the bones.

“You didn’t come,” he says eventually, more an observation than a question. 

“S’okay,” Steve says easily, smiling soft and tired, “I’ll earn it next time. You’ll see.”

“I don’t mind …” But he does mind, so he amends it halfway through. “If you need to go … take care of yourself.” 

“Nah. I want to stay here with you.” He buries himself further under Bucky’s arm and closes his eyes, bouncing his shoulder a little until Bucky gets the message and starts rubbing it gently.

The rest of the breakdown and the cleaning up can wait until after they’ve had their fill of this. 

He’ll get this part right at least.

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky continues the scene despite frequent jarring, intrusive thoughts relating to his abuse that begin to border on flashbacks, until near the end he starts to unintentionally repeat his abusers and dissociates. Steve safewords. The scene ends immediately and they discuss it, agreeing that they need to communicate better and that Bucky needs to keep self-care in mind and be more honest with himself about whether or not he's up for sex.


End file.
